Category: Miles

Background

The Wyndham Rewards program when tied with the Barclays Wyndham Business Earner Visa credit card used to be a heavyweight in terms of both earn and burn, but that’s changed due to:

– Continual Vacasa devaluations
– The loss of many Vacasa properties for points bookings
– The dwindling Vacasa footprint
– The loss of Caesar’s Diamond status matches

It doesn’t help that Wyndham points have a hard expiration of four years after earning regardless of account activity, so stuck points will eventually become forfeited points if you’re not careful.

The Way Out

United currently has a 25% bonus for incoming hotel points up to 25,000 total bonus miles, and Wyndham has a 100% transfer bonus for points transfers to United (registration required) through October 31. The regular transfer ratio is 5:1, and when you stack everything, it comes out to:

5 / 2 / 1.25 : 1 = 2 : 1
(or)
30,000 Wyndham → 15,000 United

Those United miles aren’t worth what they used to be, but they don’t expire and you’d probably rather not stay in an old Ramada next to a European airport anyway. Watch out on the Wyndham side though, based on the terms and conditions you may need to do each batch of transfers in a single transaction.

The Tweaks

The Wyndham Business Visa card still earns 8x at gas stations, so you’ve got an opportunity to earn 4x United miles (after conversion) at gas stations if you have the card. But, Wyndham to United transfers take a couple of weeks [UPDATE: Transfers are happening next day currently], so unless your Wyndham Business card statement closes in the next week or so, you may not be able to slide into the narrow window for United’s incoming transfer bonus, which would mean the you’d only get 12,000 miles for 30,000 Wyndham points, or 3.2x at gas stations.

My Action

Just because I’m doing something doesn’t mean you should to, in fact it probably means you shouldn’t. Anyhoodles, I’m sending all of my Wyndham points to United now, and I’m going to try and move my Wyndham statement closing date to next week and send everything new over before the deadline (Indiana Jones sliding under the concrete door style, but without all the leather). (Thanks to C-MontgomeryChurns)

Happy Wednesday!

The way out is easy, just follow the signs.

  1. The American Express Hilton cards have increased sign-up bonuses, though the increased bonuses don’t make up for recent devaluations:

    – Honors: 100,000 points after $2,000 spend in six months
    – Surpass: 155,000 points after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Aspire: 175,000 points after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Business: 175,000 points after $8,000 spend in six months

    These are available via referrals, use another player or another churner’s referral. Don’t apply head-on, make a churner’s day.
  2. It’s October transfer bonus time:

    – American Express 20% to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue through October 31
    – American Express 30% to Marriott Bonvoy through November 30
    – Chase 30% to British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Iberia Avios through October 31
    – Chase 80% to IHG through October 31
    – United 30% incoming transfer bonus from hotels, registration required, through October 31 (Marriott becomes 60,000:35,000)

    Even with the transfer bonuses IHG is an awful value, and Marriott Bonvoy is of dubious value, though it does offer a roundabout way to convert Membership Rewards to United MileagePlus which after the two bonuses will shake out to 1,000:758 (let’s call this a 6-7).

  3. Royal Jordanian is selling a 12 month long membership to oneworld airline lounges status match to oneworld Sapphire (Gold Sparrow) for $149. You can match with status from most non-oneworld airlines. Oneworld Sapphire gets access to AA and Alaska lounges when flying domestically, including AA Flagship lounges.

    The IATA code for Royal Jordanian is RJ (fixed, thanks to Kevin), which believe me will be helpful to know if you’re trying to use this for US domestic lounge access.
  4. Meijer MPerks has a clipable coupon for $10 off of $150+ in Mastercards through Tuesday.

    Meijer sells both Sunrise and Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  5. The Chase Sapphire Reserve’s Pay Yourself Back categories for Q4 are grocery, gas, department stores, and annual fees for 1.25 cents per point. The “select charities” option at 1.5 cents per point is still around too.
  6. American Express Offers has lots of new offers:

    – Viator $30 statement credit with $300+ through October 31
    – Best Western $50 statement credit with $250+ through December 31
    – Marriott Brands (various): $200-$300 off of $500-$750+ through December 31

    Most things bookable on airbnb experiences are also bookable on Viator, so you may find organic opportunity on that one.
  7. The Barclays Lufthansa Miles&More Mastercard has an all time high tiered sign-up bonus of 50,000+20,000 miles after $3,000 spend in 90 days and $12,000 spend in the first year, respectively.

    There is a Swiss First niche where this card can make sense if you’re good at ignoring opportunity cost. Apropos of nothing, where are my FNBO JAL groupies at? (Thanks to pizza42bob)

Happy Thursday!

The Membership Rewards United backdoor, as a mug.

  1. The US Bank Triple Cash Rewards and Leverage business cards have heightened sign-up bonuses:

    – Triple Cash Rewards: $750 after $6,000 spend in 180 days, $0 annual fee (Thanks to Jason for the 180 day correction)
    – Leverage: $750 after $7,500 spend in 120 days, $95 annual fee

    Mini FAQ: Churnable? Yes. Both? Yes. Multiple? Yes. ASL? Ok boomer.
  2. There are now multiple confirmed private and public data points that the American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts credit refresh on September 18 is a new $300 second half of the year credit whether or not the earlier $200 annual credit was redeemed. So, either way you’ve got a fresh $300 in Fine Hotels and Resorts coupons credits.
  3. Citi ThankYou Points has two transfer bonuses:

    – Avianca Lifemiles: 25% through October 18
    – Virgin Atlantic: 30% through October 18
    – Turkish Miles&Smiles: 50% through October 18

    Make sure with both Lifemiles and Miles&Smiles that space is actually available before booking, both have issues with phantom award space or missing partner award space.
  4. American Express has a somewhat widely targeted bonus for 70,000 Membership Rewards or $700 credit. Requirements:

    – Deposit $15,000 in 30 days
    – Keep an average balance ≥ $15,000 for the next 60 days
    – Make five transactions (five $1 ACHs will do fine)

    Links: 70,000 Membership Rewards, alternate 70,000 Membership Rewards, $700 credit. (Thanks to DDG for the most recent link)

Happy Tuesday!

The secret code to booking Miles&Smiles phantom space: B, R.5, Z

  1. Celtic Bank’s Mesa Visa card has a heightened sign-up bonus for 50,000 bonus points after $12,000 spend with promo code SEPT50, no referral shenanigans required.

    Churners like the card for earning points on mortgage payments and sometimes “mortgage” payments, and for transfer partners like SAS EuroBonus and Air Canada Aeroplan.
  2. The Chase Aeroplan Visa has a heightened, tiered sign-up bonus:

    – 75,000 points after $4,000 spend in three months
    – 25,000 points after $20,000 spend in 12 months

    I did the math so you don’t have to, 75,000+25,000 = 100,000. You’re welcome.
  3. The Rove Miles shopping and travel booking portal has two transfer bonuses:

    – 20% to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue through December 31
    – 20% To Finnair Avios through October 22

    Rove often has good mileage earning through their shopping portal, but points also take 30-90 days to post so earning to use a transfer bonus like these can be challenging, that is unless you started earning 30-90 days ago.
  4. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have 10x points on Zift cards through Saturday.

    Some of these can be converted to Amazon or Home Depot gift cards.
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday.

    These are Pathward / Black Hawk Network gift cards.

Happy Monday!

Flexing math skills even further.

  1. Do this now: Register for 5x rotating categories for Q4, 2025:

    – Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex: Old Navy, Chase Travel, Department Stores, (and PayPal in December)
    – Discover IT: Amazon.com and drug stores
    – Citi Dividend: Citi Travel and restaurants
    – US Bank Cash+: I choose utilities and electronics because reasons

    If Citi’s site is erroring for you, I mean (1) #citigonnaciti, and (2) try again in a few hours.
  2. Qatar Avios has a tiered incoming transfer bonus for Citi ThankYou points for up to a 40% bonus on 50,000+ points through October 15. Other programs are included too, but they’re either obscure or poor value.

    Avios transfer freely between partners, so this is effectively a 40% bonus on the other major Avios airline currencies too.
  3. The Primis Visa rewards debit card is transitioning to a 1% flat cash back rewards structure on October 17. And before you ask, yes that’s not how Primus is normally spelled.

Happy Tuesday!

Primis probably took over this credit onion’s parking lot.

Introduction

How many miles should you hold in a loyalty account before you start liquidating them or choosing to earn something else instead? My hand-wavey answer is: Hold as many as you’ll redeem between now and the next devaluation. Of course, we don’t really know when the next devaluation will happen, but we can look into the last 10 years to try and find patterns on a program specific level.

Why Programs Devalue

Before we do that, let’s remind ourselves why devaluations happen:

  • Inflation happens, and mileage earning is tied to prices
  • Airline CASM increases over time
  • Hotel CPOR increases over time
  • Devaluing a currency helps a balance sheet

Devaluations suck, but they’re entirely predictable over time. If we take as a given that programs will devalue, the next logical question is “how often?”

The Frequency

I collected data for frequent flyer program devaluations from the year 2015 until now for the major five US airlines. For this dataset, I only considered redemption devaluations; I excluded elite program changes, the removal of free-stop overs, and similar perks that aren’t directly tied to the mileage redemption rate. Some of these devaluations were only for specific types of redemptions (for example, partner awards to Europe), but that didn’t matter for this study. If redemptions devalued in some way, they were included here.

Now, let’s go airline by airline, sorted by frequency of devaluation:

Delta (10 devaluations): February 2015, August 2016, August 2017, June 2018, March 2019, October 2020, February 2021, April 2022, October 2022, September 2023

United (6 devaluations): October 2016, November 2017, November 2019, April 2020, May 2023, April-May 2024

Southwest (5 devaluations): April 2015, April 2018, April 2021, January 2024, March 2025

Alaska (5 devaluations): March 2016, July 2018, October 2019, March 2023, March 2024

AA (3 devaluations): March 2016, April 2023, July 2025

Ok, now what’s the expectation value for a devaluation in each program, just taking the number of devaluations divided by the time period (10 years)?

AirlineDevaluation Time (Expectation Value)Standard Deviation
Delta1.00 years0.42 years
United1.67 years1.05 years
Southwest2.00 years0.88 years
Alaska2.00 years1.11 years
AA3.33 years1.82 years (sqrt(3/10))

What do I do with that?

Alright, how do you make this data actionable? Well let’s go back to my hand-wavey metric for when you should stop holding miles in a particular program: Hold as many as you’ll redeem between now and the next devaluation.

That means that I wouldn’t hold more Delta SkyMiles than I’m likely to redeem in the next 1.00 years, or at least the next 1.00 years after October 2023 (😬 Spoiler alert: It seems likely that we’re going to see another Delta devaluation soon.) It’s also yet another argument about why you should be holding flexible currencies that transfer multiple places and can be cashed out directly.

Good luck out there, and have a nice weekend!

Coming soon to Delta, probably.

  1. Yesterday (and if you’re lucky still now), SoFi Banking had a bonus of $400 or 40,000 Membership Rewards on Rakuten, in addition to a $325 sign-up bonus from SoFi with $5,000 in direct deposits.

    If you already have a SoFi account, maybe this is a good indication that it’s time to close it to set yourself up for the future.
  2. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards excluding Amazon and fixed value Visa and Mastercards gift cards running through Tuesday, August 12. The big brain play here is gift card reselling, but there’s a slightly less big brain play made popular on reddit a few days ago too.
  3. Alaska is running an award sale for fares booked tonight and flown between August 19 and December 17. This one has:

    – Transcons from 7,500 miles
    – Mexico from 7,500 miles
    – Alaska from 17,500 miles
    – Hawaii from 7,500 miles

    Based on my searches, Delta is quietly matching this fare sale to and from Delta hubs.
  4. You’ve now got another Card Pointers free alternative in addition to  faux-cardpointers amex-load-offer.js. The US Credit Cards 101 Chrome plugin adds a button to the American Express offers dashboard to add an offer to all cards on the same login simultaneously, rather than just to a single card.

    One day, credit card issuers will learn about database atomicity, but we’re not there yet.

Happy Thursday!

The American Express technology team’s unofficial poster.
(Sorry, sometimes database humor can’t be helped)

  1. The American Express Business Platinum has a new no-lifetime language (NLL) offer for 200,000 Membership Rewards after $20,000 spend in three months.

    Gamers can often find regular links with 250,000 Membership Rewards and manage to get approved despite lifetime language, but there’s utility in the easy game too. (Thanks to DDG)
  2. American Express offers has an offer for $255 off of $1,250 at ITA Airways through September 7.
  3. Rakuten In-Store has new manufactured spender favorite promotions for July (just make sure you link your credit cards used in store to your Rakuten wallet):

    – 1x at Food Lion
    – 1x at Stop & Shop

    Each promotion is limited to $10 cash back or 1,000 Membership Rewards per transaction, and each must be re-activated an hour after first use. Both stores sell gift cards.
  4. American Express Membership Rewards has a 15% transfer bonus to Avianca Lifemiles through July 31. These miles are great for Star Alliance awards when the program sees the space, but there’s plenty of Star Alliance space hidden by the program so I guess trust but verify?
  5. Southwest has a fare sale for “up to 50% off” of base fares with promo code BIGDEAL for travel between August 4 and December 17 booked by Thursday night. There are of course blackout dates around when you really want to fly, and the promotion applies only to Basic and Wanna Get Away Plus fares.

    I guess technically “0% off” falls within “up to 50% off”, so blackout dates are only imaginary.
  6. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 in Visa gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Different cards have different fees

    These are Pathward gift cards.

Happy Tuesday friends!

At least the promo code is fun to type.